Who are you?
Where did you come from? Where are you going? Why are you here?
Why can’t we just live and be happy without engaging in these troublesome questions?
I’m not sure how to answer this question, but:
As a therapist, questions of this sort come up all the time.
And, it’s not just the person him or herself asking the questions, but people close to the person ask as well: a spouse, a child, a parent, a friend, a lover. “Who are you?” It might even be in a sentence, “I never knew you had this in you.” or in the negative, “You are not the person I married (or fell in love with).”
A good starting point in discovering “Who You Are” is to explore, Where you came from. Which raises a foundational question: Where or What or Who is Home?
WHAT, WHERE, WHO IS HOME
What is Home?
What is the relationship between yourself and home?
Why is home an important place?
I recall a few years back having dinner with an acquaintance, a practicing psychotherapist. At the time, we were meeting semi-regularly, but we’ve since drifted apart.
In this interchange, the topic of “Home” arose. We agreed “home” was a kind of orienting word. If you look home up in the dictionary you will learn that home is a point of beginning.
I recall asking him about how he defined home (for himself). It was then that he launched into a fairly long story about some farmland and a farmhouse that his family owned in Southern Utah. That this property had been handed down from pioneer days to the present day and that across his various siblings, who had generally gotten along very well together, a great disruption occurred because everyone laid claim to this property as part of their identity. Everyone, including himself had vivid early childhood memories living or working on that farm. It was “home” to a lot of people. It wasn’t so much the money, it was that this place was a deep part of each person’s identity and they didn’t want to sell it, divide it, or depart with it in any way. At the end, he apologized for going on so long about this topic, but clearly, home (for him) was that farm in Southern Utah.
Home defined: “1. relating to the place where one lives or lived.” Secondary definition: “2. someone's or something's place of origin, or the place where a person feels they belong.
The secondary definition raises additional questions, especially the phrase, “…where a person feels they belong…”
The words, “home” and “belong” are linked. It would be hard to feel like a place is home if you don’t feel like you belong there. But, you could feel like you belong to something or someone even if it was not a consistent place, per se. Even if it wasn’t home. In everyday life, phrases around the idea of home, are myriad.
“Hearth and home”
“Home is where the heart is”
“Her home is her castle”
“There’s no place like home”
“I’m working from home”
“No success can compensate for failure in the home”
Home can be: 1. A place, 2. People (or a person), 3. An idea or state of mind. People frequently refer to all three to describe what, where, or who home is.
Think for a moment of the word or image your own home. When you do, What comes to mind? Does a single image of a home appear? or Can home be more than one place? Say, your home origin (where you were born and where you grew up) and home when you created your own nuclear family (you, your spouse, your children). Which of these two places would be your home. Or, is there really only one home along with some subordinate homes, at least as far as your emotional connection to the word “home” goes.
For me, home is a small house in Central California. I can recall the place vividly. I had two parents (Jim and Betty) and then, there was my sister (younger sister by two years). The house was on a corner lot. There was a brick and wrought iron fence that circled the front and side. There was a garage. I recall my father constructing the fence with bricks. The image of him with a brick trowel in his hand, smoking a cigarette in the other, and the smell of cigarette smoke mingled with wet cement is primary for me. I recall helping him do it, although I must have been only 10 or 11 years at the time. My best friend, Chuck, lived across the street. There was a palm tree and a cactus garden on the South-East corner of my front yard.
I drive by this home today, when I go back to visit, but my family no longer lives in this home on the corner. It is run down, the grass is brown, the front flower garden is dead. The paint and exterior has faded. My father is dead and my mother lives elsewhere. My sister lives in Michigan. This is not a place I yearn for in the present. In fact, I don’t think I ever yearned for it. Especially after I left home. It wasn’t a happy home. It was a house of fractured relationships, now mostly gone.
This home is wrapped up in a whole life story. My life story. The story, at least as I remember it, started from as early as I can remember until I was about 19 years old when I left home, never to return in any kind of permanent way.
Contained within the walls of this home, or perhaps in the ether-sphere of this brick, mortar, wood structure are a bundle of memories, a few good, some bad. But, as it is today, the neighborhood and that home is not what it was in my childhood. However, in my memory, my fantasies, and daydreams, things are more or less fixed and in one coherent piece. This fixed piece, or space of time, was my childhood, good and bad. I think, although it’s a fuzzy image, that my childhood ended when I graduated from junior high school, about the age of 12 years. I recall a shift in my memory of events and feelings up to and before 12 years old and then after 12 years old. My so-called adolescence started, at least for me, at 12+ years old and extended through about 21 years when I returned home from a Mormon Mission. The Mormon Mission was the first time I left home, for two years, between the age of 19 and 21. I recall, at the time, feeling like I’d become a different person when I returned home from this experience, and I was determined to attend Brigham Young University, which was a clear and direct road away from home of origin and family, although back then I didn’t think of these shifts in so direct terms.
What did I acquire in childhood and adulthood that set me up for a life-long journey through adulthood?
When I engage in therapy with people, this topic frequently comes up because almost everyone has a story with some kind of structural features that overlap with mine. Example: Everyone has a childhood.
Motivators or guidelines for life are sometimes framed in terms of “values” or “ideals.” A metaphor that makes sense to me is a “moral compass.” It is usually from “Home” that one generates some kind of a dynamic “moral compass.” This orienting sense forms in childhood, then starts changing through through adolescence, and keeps changing through adulthood. My “moral compass” is much different today as a 65 year old adult, than it was when I was 10 years old and living at “Home.”
For me, “Home” has a strong place component, there is also a people component (parents, friends, sibling, role models), and state-of-mind (religious, social experiences, school) component. If you asked me where I’m from, I would say “California” although I’ve lived more years in Utah than in any other place.
How much of your sense of home is shaped by place, person, and state-of-mind?
Why is Home Important?
In therapy, it is almost a guarantee that part of the process will involve gathering a detailed history of your life and life experiences, from home forward so-to-speak. In the profession, this activity is referred to as a “clinical interview.”
Some people hate changing therapists because it seems like they must start “all over.” This is because it’s hard to tell your life story to someone, even if it is guided by questions. Even harder when that person is a detective looking for things that might be sources of trouble. Turning over stones that you would rather leave where they are. Confronting demons that you would like to keep “resting in peace.” Everyone has skeletons in some kind of closet, and it is always difficult to discover or re-discover them.
It is hard to say when the profession of clinical/counseling/school psychology or psychiatry first began the practice of conducting a clinical interview, but its origin probably stems from Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) who was the first psychologist to refer to the strategy of clinical clinical interview in written reports and documents. This makes sense because even though Piaget was a highly intuitive thinker, his theoretical leanings were in the direction of postulating that underlying early developmental processes impacted a child’s thinking and differentiating self from others. In this regard, taking an early life history, for Piaget, made sense.
The clinical interview is generally the starting point of most psychotherapy treatment interventions. The question is, “why,” in adulthood, is it important to know “Where” you came from? Because, “Where” you came from has a direct bearing on “Who” you are. And, “Who” you are has a direct bearing on “What” your issue is and “Why” your issue still hangs around, causing you misery even though you want to be rid of the misery.
A question: If you had a different home life, would you be facing the same issue(s) you are facing today?
Constructing your Personal History of a Psychological Problem
To appreciate the power of home to impact your current daily function, below is a simple exercise.
Identify as best you can what your problem or issue is. What would you say is the issue that would (or that has) motivate(d) you to see a psychologist once a week for six months?
Example answer: I am anxious all the time. When I think about the future, all I see is gloom and doom. I can never feel relaxed. I’m always restless or on-edge, and have headaches that I think are tension headaches because taking aspirin doesn’t help. It doesn’t take much to get me in a state of worrying. I was driving to work today and on my way, I saw someone slip and fall on the sidewalk. I wanted to stop and help, but the traffic was too heavy. I worried all day about this person, and I felt guilty that I didn’t do anything to help the person. I feel like a heartless individual.
Think back in your life and try to identify when you first felt feelings of anxiousness, worry, or uncertainty.
Example answer: My childhood was mostly happy, but I was always in trouble. I was a wanderer, even as a toddler, I’d get outside and wander around. The world was a curious place. I remember that to this day. But then, one day, I was wandering around and I got lost. I thought the place looked familiar, but it wasn’t. I wanted to find my mother, but she was nowhere in sight. I started running. I fell, skinned my knee. I remember I was bleeding. It seemed my life was over. I kept running. I came to a road and there were cars speeding back and forth. I wanted to run across the road, but I knew if I did I would die. That was the first time I ever thought about death. I must have found my mother because to this day, I can’t remember how I got back home.
When did you experience this problem, at it worst? How old were you and what were the circumstances?
Example answer: It was when I was 16 years old, yes, I remember it well. It was the first time I had fallen in love with a boy. I didn’t think of myself as attractive, but this boy, Scott, showed interest in me, and we spent long hours talking and laughing. He became a friend. I was attracted to him, deeply. Secretly, I wanted to Marry him. I would go over to his house, and he would come over to my house. We went on dates. I thought were a couple. He hadn’t given me a ring or anything, but we were a couple. One day, I went over to his house and there was another car in the driveway. It was my girlfriend’s car. I knocked on the door and he answered. He let me in and told me he wanted to introduce me to his new girlfriend. Then I saw her, and him, they were standing next to each other. They were holding hands. He said that he was hoping that he and I could just be friends. I started crying, ran out of the house and went home. I was in a state of panic, heart racing, sobbing, sweating. I wanted to kill myself, just take a knife and stab myself to death, I was so angry and sad. What had I done wrong? I didn’t go to school the next day. I didn’t eat. I wanted to die. My life was over, at least that’s how I felt. She was better than me, prettier. It was then that I started becoming fearful, not that I would harm myself, but that I would be harmed if I went outside, so I hid in my bedroom. My parents tried to get me out, but I wouldn’t budge. They told me something was wrong with me, at least that’s all I remember about it. I became afraid that something was wrong with me. I was broken, never worked right from the beginning. I was ugly. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t make sense out of anything. I remember that since that time I have never been the same, even today. That’s when I started to second guess myself. Maybe I went through some kind of trauma, but on the surface it doesn’t seem like a trauma. Scott was just a stupid boy during my high school years. Anyway, that’s the story that comes to mind. The worst circumstance I’ve ever experienced.
How is this “example experience” related to the idea of “Home”?
What can you conjecture about this person that made her vulnerable to a love trauma?
What else would you want to know about this person’s early history and home?
Is there a link between this formative story (of a love betrayal) and the client’s current state of chronic anxiety?
Psychic Turbulence
In an earlier post we discussed the concept of psychic turbulence. A kind of unease that sets in and although it is not itself, disruptive, the turbulence is experienced as a kind of background emotional noise that can make a person vulnerable to a psychic issue or problem (chronic anxiety or depression or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
The origin of turbulence is hard to determine for any particular individual, but one feature of it is that a person can never feel settled or content. There is usually a point when this “unease” manifests itself and there is usually an event that is a transition between when the person felt at ease (or carefree) versus in a state of unease. In previous posts, I connected the unease with a felt sense of “conflict.” Conflict with oneself, conflict with others, conflict with one’s circumstances. I find an interesting parallel here in that Home is a place (circumstances), others, and state-of-mind (ones self). Home and turbulence are somehow intertwined or linked.
It seems to me that an origin-point for turbulence is either: 1. Something that we are born with or that is an innate part of our psychological makeup or 2. Something we acquire earlier in life that is modified and changed as we experience and interact with the world.
What is the phenomenology of turbulence?
The features of turbulence in an individual can be identified through the lens of psychopathology. In depression, chronic anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Behaviors. These psychic conditions are impacted (or they create) psychic turbulence.
I will continue this entry, so feel free to return to it 2/27/2022.